Going Back To Church: This Is My Story

By R. George Riggon

I warmly welcome this personal testimony from my brother, in the

Family of God, and sincerely hope that this book will be a blessing to

Christians everywhere. The deep early childhood consciousness of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcia M Publishing House
• Release date: Aug 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781913905415

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my dearly departed mother, Sybil Eliza Patterson, born in Brownsville, Cascade, Hanover, Jamaica,100 years ago, on July 27, 1923. May her eternal soul be secured in the rest that is Jesus Christ, unto God the Father. I dedicate this work also to my Sister in Christ, Mrs Joan ‘Patsy’ Evans-Blake, a  past Sunday School teacher at the New Testament Church of God, Mount Pelier District, Sandy Bay, Hanover, Jamaica, who wetted my appetite to learn more about Jesus. Today, I continue to hold in my memory her caring and patient handling of our large class of primary aged children every Sunday morning. That caring nature would get all of us to sit attentively, for at least short spells, and listen to stories about Jesus, Moses, Joseph, Jacob, Daniel and other characters from the Bible. Sister Patsy got me interested in seeking to understand the written words on the pages of the Bible, and though I would fall away from the narrow Christian pathway later in life, I never lost the memory of her encouragement that we must try to behave more like Jesus when we grew up. I give thanks to God for placing both of these wonderful women in the path of my life at such an early stage.

Acknowledgement

The planning, researching, drafting and completion of any book takes time. In the process, one person can only do so much, consuming physical and mental energy, emotion, materials and so forth. The work can get very heavy and the path long and seemingly never ending. But with other good people around, this labour of love became a reality, and I must acknowledge the great support and encouragement by my wife, and sister in the faith, Novelet Hill-Riggon. She sacrificed many long hours to type up the first draft of this work. I thank her for the full and complete interest given for the cause of preparing this final version of my story.

I must also acknowledge the different levels and areas of support and encouragement received from several other persons during the course of planning, drafting and completion. In some cases, the input was direct while at other times, indirectly so. They provided great insight with often few words, and not even knowing this at times. There were others who contributed much by just simply being themselves, so that from things they said quite naturally new thoughts would be triggered to move the work forward. On this Christian journey we are encouraged to rely upon faith, meaning to have a total dependence upon God to lead us through. 

I must give thanks to God for placing me among the congregation of the New Testament Church of God at Mount Pelier, for I have come to acknowledge that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to his purpose. We must all be united together in the Christian faith and play our part to promote a greater desire for God, in our families, community and beyond. Let us therefore hope that the echoes of this story will reach out to the attentive ears of others who do not yet know the love and peace of the Lord. May the God of all grace continue to bless and keep us, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord.

The Purpose

Of This Book

It has been the practice of a lifetime for me to gladly exclaim to myself each morning as I awake, ‘Thank you God, I am alive another day!’ This first moment of consciousness in being alive has to be ranked as the most wonderful feelings that any person can experience each day. Life is our most precious possession and as I stir out of deep sleep and settle into full consciousness each new day, I feel thankful. As a child my mother made it clear to me that God actually exist and is the creator and ruler over all things, from the deepest part of the ocean to the highest heaven.  She described God in a way that caused me to picture a great big and powerful force without visible form, having no face or human body. It had always puzzled me that without having eyes He could see, and without legs, God could move, and without hands, He could touch! In the mind of a child, God was like a magnet with force to move visible things at will. I am sure that my mother did not expect that I would understand at my young age and stage, all of the complications and details of just who the God who spoke on the pages of her old King James edition of the Bible was all about. I believe though that my mother was teaching me that although I couldn’t see God, in the way that I could see her, I must never doubt the truth of His existence. In time, I would come to find that this very issue was one that occupied the thoughts of many other persons also, at some point in their life. Much of what we believe comes from within immediate social circles of family and friends. Such circles continue to expand quite naturally and continuously throughout our formal schooling, training and working days. I believe God knows the thoughts of every heart and He will continue to provoke us to think about Him every single day, even when we don’t want to do so. I also believe my mother when she said that in time, there would be ample opportunities for me to seek after a personal knowledge of just who is our great big, wonderful God.

At the various phases and stages of a lifetime I believe that most people will develop some level of curious thoughts around the starting point or inception of their very being. Such often repeated questions of just who we are do pop up quite naturally in the mind. None of us can avoid giving some thought to the cycle which takes us from birth, through physical growth and development, maturing, and ageing unto death. It is a natural biological cycle that no one can alter and so I think these are things we should all want to know, and not least to get answers to questions of life’s purpose, destiny and legacies. These are things of deep interest to us that God already knew in eternity, even as He begun to set in motion streams for creation, reproduction, sustaining and ending life. He caused every human being to become aware of His supreme presence above us and to understand just who we are under His sun and sky. Hence, God has made this possible by giving us the first and most trustworthy written record of divine revelations and illuminations about Himself. For our benefit, we have each received a personal endowment of generous gifts to help us to come to know the truth of God and to apply wisdom in answering life’s many questions. I take a great deal of interest in those first five words of the opening chapter of the King James’ English translated Bible that say: ‘In the beginning God created…’ Hence I have never believed that in the beginning there was a random surge of natural movements, atomic explosions or collisions that can explain, without a responsible doubt, the establishment of every form of life in all the universe. I believe completely that the most accomplished earth scientists, biologists or naturalists have been gifted with wonderful abilities by God, to investigate and explore some of the many secrets hidden in this universe. While it is the pleasure of God to conceal many things it is to our honour that we will begin to search out these things. But there should be no one, under the sun, who should think to challenge or reject the truth of God’s sacred holy Word. We can discover only the tip of the iceberg, as it were, for God alone knows the full depth and breadth of His creation.  

On the pages of the Bible, only God alone could have revealed the many things about Himself as an eternal Spirit and the possessor of a divine nature for loving kindness. We learn also about our likeness in a moral sense to the character of our creator and which we could never unearth through our own scientific methods. God chose to use persons and things to display the irrefutable evidence of His sovereignty and it is through the giving of the Bible that we have come to know and understand many mysteries of the global earth we inhabit. All this complex expanse is held in perfect balance each day by that great, big, powerful and eternally wonderful God. He alone is the author of both visible things that the eyes can see and also the invisible things that we have not seen. 

I was born into a large Jamaican family and came to believe in God from an early age and began to understand the direct connection between sacred and natural things. From earliest days I developed a clear understanding that it is God who established and heads every family and as such the love, care, protection found within us comes from the nature and likeness that He chose to share with us. I am also aware that during my formative years many social and cultural trends started in the previous roaring and swinging decades of 1950s and 60s would later come home to roost. Those were times to explore changes to body, soul and spirit, when many beliefs and familiar practices simply passed away like outdated calendars. In such an atmosphere for change, the very reality of God and of His holiness would face serious and severe challenges from areas of the world that previously promoted them! The Romans became more secular, the Greeks more religious; the British became more home-facing and the Americans more pioneering in establishing churches around the globe. As a child in times of such universal changes, the sounds of gospel music and expression of cultures would also enter my small world. I came to understand some of the clashes between worldly cultural values and the Christian beliefs proclaimed through churches. In my young mind some things would become the anchor, as it were, for where I would come to stand as the years went by and the inevitable storms of life stirs and blows harder and stronger against me. For the most part, it turned out that the early years for me would be quite calm. It was at the end of my primary school years that my foundation stones would be first tested. I had lived with only my mother up to this time. She had left my father in England, and they remained separated. But then almost suddenly she announced that we would be going to live in England with my father! It wasn’t long before we were all together as a modern nuclear family. There would then follow a raft of accompanying changes in my life and my foundation stone would begin to move again. There was no uncertainty about who I was and even who God was to me, but the previous instant answers to these very questions became more hesitant in my conscious daily thoughts. On many mornings that I awake I didn’t always exclaim the same words of thanks to God for His great mercy and love. This was the beginning of my backsliding. Yet I had not realised that I was drifting away from my earlier talks with God. This was so, I believe, because the devil was allowed to tempt and try me. That old serpent, the tempter from the beginning of human inhabitation of this global earth, had cast a veil over me. As a young teen in the middle of England, I confess that just about everything that I had clung to at my foundation, quickly melted away. Many things that I believed to have been holy or sacred now seemed to be of the world. The winds of change were blowing, and they pretty much moved me to a different place. The devil had cleverly enticed my eyes and ensnared me in his net. I rebelled and was disobedient against the ways and truth of God. I liken the devil’s working to an evil paramilitary leader who actively recruits vulnerable and innocent children as soldiers, against their knowledge of his true intentions. Once taken in, it becomes very difficult for the captive child to get out again. Such is the guile of the devil, an active and cunning adversary against the Word and truth of God. 

I managed to escape from the devil’s grip and today, I want to share my story and give thanks to God for the strength and courage given to allow me to see again in the newness of life. Yet I know that there are countless others who remain ensnared in the same place of darkness where I had been, and they have not yet found a way out. I want to encourage those who remain in bondage to the devil that while it seems to be almost impossible to escape, God can make a way for you to get out. All things are possible with God, if we only believe His faithful and true promises. He will neither leave nor forsake us when we learn to lean and depend on Jesus Christ. One of the expressions which I had often heard my mother repeat, no doubt for my learning, was that a drowning man will clutch at a straw, but he will not cry out for help until he accepts that he is heading into dire strait. There is a present danger in every crisis. The person under the veil of the devil’s stronghold may not even notice the severity of their present situation let alone to raise an alarm or to shout out for help. In my case, it had finally dawned upon me that I was at the wrong place and drifting further away into deep water, with my very life at stake. I didn’t open my mouth to make the plea or cry out for help. But God is good and He alone knows our heart and even our innermost thoughts. We don’t even have to open our mouths for God to hear our cries. My longing to escape from the devil’s stronghold began with a simple prayer which I said in my head repeatedly. I believed that God will not turn away those who earnestly seek after Him, and so I would simply utter: 

‘Father God, I am aware today that I am standing at the wrong place and under the influence of the wrong spirit. I know it is the wrong place because I do not feel comfortable in myself or with my life. I do not feel your presence. I just want to escape from here. Please help me, in Jesus name.’ 

Amen.

Today I feel liberated and redeemed by the